The heat's been getting to me. I'm getting confused more often than not. I can't remember what I'm doing from one moment to the next.

In any event, I went to the Liquor Barn and picked up some cheap Coronas and a free straw cowboy hat to go with them.

I finally beat, "The World Ends With You," on DS. I've been behind on my games for a while now. I can't remember the last game I've actually played all the way through. I think it was Professor Layton and the Curious Village. No, scratch that, it was, "On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness," on PC. So I have been out there playing this and that, but nothing that most people would scramble for. I have been playing the heavy hitters, like GTA IV, because I don't have the appropriate systems. In fact, I've been catching up on some games I've skipped over, like Cooking Mama, another game thatmost  people would ask, "What's that?"

My PSP fell less than two feet off of my coffee table and onto the carpet while I was updating it, but somehow it still managed to chip two of the buttons, namely the triangle and circle and there's no way to properly repair them. So now I have to play with chipped buttons for as long as I use my PSP, which is infrequently, because it's games suck.

It has also come to my attention that people are using the new Spore Creature Creator game on computer to make their own very poor quality porn. Spore Creature Creator hasn't even been out for a week yet, and already there's websites devoted to this unintentional activity. Different races, creeds and colours who play this game are just naturally converging to create a new breed of porn called, "sporn." This may just be the one uniting factor between Israelis and Palestinians that brings peace. Bear in mind this is only a pre-release game to get everyone excited for the real deal coming out later in the year. Imagine what they're going to do once they have all the goods.

Having played the Creature Creator, I honestly can't blame people for getting so creative. All you do, and all you can do is create creatures. In that respect, there's truth in advertising. The creatures in these pictures seen having "sex" are essentially one organism with two heads, two sets of arms, and two legs, so there's no actual porn being created. I'm sure that some U.S. Senator will get a whiff of this and raise a ruckus, claiming that Spore is trying to corrupt our children, as opposed to our children already being corrupted and obsessed with boobs, butts, and genitals. If you give an adolescent boy a spiralgraph to play with, he will draw boobs, guaranteed, then show his friends and snicker. The lack of accuracy of the boobs will in no way lessen his pride in displaying them. The fact that they are at least boob-like will be sufficient for his merriment.

Also, it's come to my attention through a Penny-Arcade linked article that game publishers are now suing game review sites over writing bad reviews. This could expand into other fields, so that the mere act of saying a game sucked to one's friends could land you in litigious water. We could enter a new sort of Communist/1980-esque state, where Big Brother will be listening to everything we say for a discouraging word about sucky media. Asking for your money back from a bad movie will automatically land you in jail.

I was listening to the Weezer song, "Pork and Beans," where the lyrics say, "Timbaland know the secret to get to the top of the charts. Maybe if I work with him, I could perfect the art," and I realized one important new factor about top ten albums. Having a top ten album no longer means you have more fans than the other bands out there with releases. It means you have more fans that don't know how to download albums off the internet. In the past, popularity has always been measured by ticket sales, album sales, and song requests on the radio and TV, but now in addition to legal internet downloads like say from iTunes, you also have to figure in illegal downloads. Strangely enough, it's possible to monitor this. Most torrent sites keep careful records on how many times a file has been downloaded, so even if the medium isn't reputable, you can still keep score.

I was watching the, "Guys Choice Awards," on SpikeTV last night, and was surprised to find that there was still a SpikeTV. I was more surprised that celebrities would physically show up to accept awards from this show. They had most the cast from Superbad, Harold and Kumar, as well as Harrison Ford, Matt Damon, and Brendan Fraser. There were half-naked women sitting in the walls, and a homage to hot chicks every two minutes. Still, it was incredibly gay. There was a sense that some dude would just whip it out and start beating it at any moment, and they did. They had a montage of masturbation scenes from movies, like American Pie, Fast Times at Ridgemount High, and There's Something about Mary. That's pretty damn gay. I think the real gay aspect about the show was basically how it's entirely devoted to man-crushes. They would just come up on stage and talk about how awesome the dudes accepting the awards were, while barely concealing their gay-boners. Harrison Ford commented on this, as he accepted an award shaped like two balls from Brendan Fraser, who had just finished a love speech. Sammuel L. Jackson was there, and you could tell he could barely restrain himself from screaming, "That's it! I've had it! I've had it with all these mother-fucking gay dudes in this mother-fucking SpikeTV Awards!"

I don't know, maybe I've surpassed the demographic this kind of show appeals to: guys who subscribe to Maxim. Not that there's anything wrong with Maxim, but you just get to that stage (maturity) where ogling airbrushed small "c" celebrities in thongs and reading captions to photos that look like they were written by drunk frat dudes isn't as appealing.

Am I the only one who thinks frat-boy culture has hit an all time high? Whereas actual frats have probably been in a steady decline for a while now?

Weezer : Videos : Pork and Beans

I've been going into Wal-Mart here in Abbotsford pretty regularly, considering it's right next to work. While shopping there, I pass through the toy aisle, looking for a set of action figures I've been waiting to come out. Specifically, I'm looking DC Universe Classics Series 2, or Series 3 by Mattel, so I can pick up a Harley Quinn, a Blue Superman, a Tim Drake Robin, a Nightwing, a Sinestro, a Hal Jordan Green Lantern, a Deathstroke... pretty much any or all of them. Preferably all. These are DC Comic action figures packaged in the style of Marvel Legends, and sculpted by the Four Horsemen. DC Direct has many version of these characters available, but none are this poseable, or readily available to the average consumer unless they've got a good comic shop or independent toy store to go to. Plus, they come with build-a-figure parts, and who doesn't want their own Gorilla Grod, or Solomon Grundy?

Anyway, they have Series 1, which is all well and good, but not good enough. My complaint with my local Wal-Mart, beyond it's refusal to stock the new series, is the fact that they're not even properly displaying the old series. I've been in there at least thirteen times over the past four months or more, and not once have they had the correct price sticker on the product peg. They don't even have a product peg to speak of. The have them on a The Batman Shadow-Tek peg.

Now, I worked in a toy department for five years. This was at the Superstore. The Superstore sucks so bad, it's not even on Wal-Mart's radar. I've been in line-up at Wal-Mart, and listened to the white trash customers in front of me just randomly start talking about how bad the Superstore is. They use phrases like, "Stupidstore." Despite this, however, if you're buying a toy at the Superstore, odds are it's going to have a price sticker on it, and it's going to be correct, or close to it. How do I know? Because it was my job to put price stickers on everything. This wasn't really a job I wanted, but it was still my job.

Now, my question is this: what do the employees at Wal-Mart do? I see them there. I see them stocking shelves, even though the shelves are constantly empty. They don't really help customers. In fact, they avoid it. That's understandable. I'm just saying that at some point, if there's a person who's job it is to put price stickers on the product, they should be doing this. The fact that there's at least one employee on in the department from before the store opens, until after it closes, seven days a week, someone should eventually after a four month period have put a price sticker on the product. Just one little sticker. I bet they have someone who's job it is to do this exclusively. I bet they have their own little machine they cart around with them. The process would take them seventeen seconds, including the time it takes to print out the sticker.

I know that the Wal-Mart employees are an unmotivated lot. I know they're not paid well, although there's a possibility they make more than me (I'm not paid well), but STILL. STILL!

...still.

Yo momma so fat, when she make a B.L.T, it stands for: bacon, lettuce, and a truckload of more bacon.

Yo momma so fat, even Rosie O'Donnel wouldn't do her.

It's almost the start of Summer, but the Summer movie season has already begun. The theme this Summer seems to be: super heroes. There's five super hero movies being released. The first was Iron Man, a definite hit by any means. Robert Downey was perfect as Tony Stark, and the tech-heavy action sequences kept the audiences delighted. The next is The Incredible Hulk, a reboot of the terrible, terrible, terrible movie directed by Ang Lee, wherein the Hulk gains control of his powers to battle the Abomination and not much else happens plotwise. Think of Godzilla with tinnier green monsters. I've been seeing ads for this movie around the clock. The only reason anyone would want to see it is for the, "Hulk smash!" aspect of it, but they're going to have to sit through a bunch of crap about the Hulk running from the authorities while trying to win back his girlfriend. There's going to be so much CG in it, you'd be better off watching the new Pixar flick. Really, the Hulk's never been that popular of a comic book character. His old TV show was basically in the same style of imported Japanese kids action shows, like Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, where when things got tough, they'd morph into a giant monster. Half the show was watching the Hulk turn green. People remember the Hulk more for his campy show than for his comics, which have never been best sellers, although I have to admit that his latest runs, like Plant Hulk, World War Hulk, and Red Hulk have kept me reading. Marvel is trying to build his character up from some pencil-neck geek with emotional problems to a warrior, a menace, and a leader of men. Still, Hulk doesn't really offer much in the way of arch-villains like other characters, like Spider-Man. The Abomination and the Leader are the only two I can name, and since audiences probably won't go for some melon-headed green guy, they went with the Abomination, even if they changed everything about the character that had any bearing on the comics.

What's puzzled me about super hero movies for a long time now is how they have to change the origins of certain super heroes to make them more believable. Take the last Hulk movie, for instance: instead of Dr.Banner gaining his powers in a gamma bomb test, he's injected with some weird serum when he's a kid, and then blasted with some kind gamma ray with nanobots or something. Neither origin is more believable over the other, because neither origin is believable. You can't explain the existence of a massive green giant who can throw tanks around and completely convince someone that, "Oh yeah, that could totally happen." It's the same way with Spider-Man. People buy the fact that he gets his powers from a spider-bite, but they won't believe that a science student could create his own web blasters, so they have to change it for the movie.

The next couple of super hero/comic book movies are Hancock and Wanted. Now, Wanted's based on a comic book, but it's not about super heroes, whereas Hancock is about a super hero, but it's not based on a comic book.

After that come: Batman the Dark Knight. This movie's been more hotly anticipated since the death of Heath Ledger. It's easy to do a bad Batman movie. Just look at the original Batman movie based on the TV show, or Batman Returns, Batman Forever, or Batman and Robin. The only plot behind these movies was: let's take a few of Batman's villains, throw them at him and have him fight them. Spider-Man 3 fell into this same trap. For some reason, there's always two villains to fight, not one. Batman Returns: Penguin and Catwoman; Batman Forever: Two-Face and The Riddler; Batman and Robin: Mr.Freeze and Poison Ivy; Spider-Man 3: Sandman and Venom. It's like none of these villains are good enough on their own, so they have to have another. Dark Knight's all about the Joker, though, and it's hard to go wrong with that. I hear the Scarecrow's in there somewhere too, but seeing as he was already introduced in Batman Begins, they won't waste time on origins. Everyone knows origin stories are some of the best a character can offer. Not so with super villains in the movies. Every time you introduce a new villain, you have to show their origin story, or at least have some big long speech about it. That takes up half the movie. Think about Spider-Man 3, since it relates to a lot of other two-villain movies. Sandman is introduced, we hear his back story, then we see how he gets his powers, then he fights Spider-Man, then we see Venom get introduced, he teams up with Sandman, and they fight Spider-Man. At least one of them has to die. That's a rule for some reason. Penguin dies; Catwoman mysteriously vanishes. Two-Face dies; The Riddler goes to jail. Venom dies; Sandman escapes. I don't remember, but I think Poison Ivy dies; and Mr.Freeze helps Batman save Alfred.

The thing about the Joker, though, is that he has no origin story in the comic books. There's a few variations, of course, but nothing definitive, so you can do whatever you want to his story in a movie, and not have it compared to the comics. Of course, we've already seen how the Joker came to be in the movie Batman, so it's going to be interesting to see how they tweak it. Jack Nicholson was pretty iconic as the Joker, so Heath is going to have to take it to strange new places. You can almost get a sense of that from the trailers, though, that his Joker is more desperate somehow. Maybe it relates to the one iteration of the Joker from the Killing Joke, where the Joker operates on the philosophy that anyone could become him if they had just one bad day.

After that, it's time for the new Hellboy movie. Hellboy's more about fighting giant hell monsters than villains, so he's not going to fall into any traps. The same director is doing this movie as well, with most of the same cast and a few additions. Should be good.

With super hero movies come super hero games. Lately: you can tell if a game is bad simply by how many systems it's released on. If it's on the PS3 and DS simultaneously, it's bound to be bad. I know there's a few exceptions like GTA, Guitar Hero, etc., but those are can't fail games. The kind of games I'm talking about are released just to tie into the movie's popularity. They're no different than the novelty cups you'd get at McDonalds. Best to avoid them at all costs, although Lego Batman looks like fun.

With prices of food and gas skyrocketing, the one place that should not be increasing it's prices is online stores selling downloadable games. The logic behind pricing a downloadable game in excess of the physical copy is baffling. For instance, Twisted Metal: Head-On went from $14.99 to $15.99. You can buy it new for less, out of the bargain bin, which is where their game selection comes from. These are all titles that nobody really wanted when they first came out, then were re-released as Sony's "Greatest Hits" titles for a little less. Still, you can barely give them away. To give you an idea about these games: I traded in Twisted Metal: Head-On to EB after buying it out of a bargain bin and only playing it once or twice casually.

I'm wondering what the mark-up is all about. How much money do they need to make of these games, which have already bombed? You're not paying for the convenience of owning a digital copy, because it really isn't all that convenient. After all, you need a USB cable connection to your computer via your PSP, you need to open a new Sony Store account to access the site, then you need to enter your credit card information. After purchasing the item, you have to wait in excess of ten, to fifteen minutes for it to finish downloading onto your PSP's memory card. These games take up 400MB of data on a memory card that only has 1GB or less, so if you have any music, videos or photos saved up on your card, you're going to have to wipe them. If you want to download more games, you're going to have to buy more memory cards, which cost twice more than the games themselves. Also, the site's a bit tricky with the downloads. I've tried downloading a demo for Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law a few times and have it fail on me, so you could potentially have your paid download fail. So to recap you need: a computer; internet access; a  PSP USB cable; a PSP; an account; a credit card. As opposed to: a store; $15. Plus, if you're at EB, you can probably find the game cheaper used, in which case it's only $9. If you're buying a download, you're essentially buying a used game anyway. Plus, you get the game case and AN INSTRUCTION MANUAL. Y'know, so you can actually figure out what the hell it is you're supposed to do. None of this PDF crap you're supposed to figure out.

On the subject of PSP, I finally found their so-called PSP TV outlet cable. I read the fine print on it: it's only for PSP-2000 (and I don't know what the hell that even is. I had to google that to see it's the sub-name for the PSP Slim. Also: IT DOESN'T LET YOU PLAY GAMES ON YOUR TV. You can only watch videos, photos, and music (why the hell would you need to put music on your TV?). How useless is that?

The entire existence of the PSP Slim angers me. It's slimmer, ergo: better than my PSP. The presumption is that I should trade in my PSP and get a PSP Slim. However, it has virtually all the same features, plus you can play all the same games on either system. It's not like the PSP is a Gameboy Advanced ("Advanced" *snicker*) and the PSP Slim is a Nintendo DS Lite. You don't have to throw your regular-ass PSP in the trash and get a new one. It's just lighter. It's not like the old PSP weighed a tonne anyway. Either way, it's going to fit in your pocket, presuming you have pockets.

Game prices increase sharply on US PLAYSTATION Store - PSP Fanboy

A man walks into the bar, and asks the bartender, "What's a good drink?"

The bartender replies, "A grasshopper." So the man orders a grasshopper.

Afterwards, while he's walking home, he passes a grasshopper on the side of the road. He asks the grasshopper, "Hey, did you know there's a drink name after you?"

The grasshopper says nothing, because it's a grasshopper.

*

Man A: "My wife is so fat!"

Man B: "How fat is she?"

Man A: "She's just... so fat. Just so very, very fat." (cries)

*

A horse and a pony walks into a bar.

The bartender asks the horse, "Why the long face?"

The horse replies, "Because I'm a horse."

The pony orders a glass of water.

The bartender asks, "Why would you come to a bar just to order a glass of water?"

The pony replies, "Because I'm a little hoarse."

The cottonwood has been falling steadily for weeks. Outside of my apartment it's gathered in deep patches in the potholes and along the edges of the landscaping ties. It's like a vast collection of cobwebs from a long forgotten attic I've stumbled into. I can feel them tickling my cheeks as I walk lonely, hands stuffed into my pockets. They swirl about the air as if they were white flies. I can almost discern an intent to their direction. They clog my shallow breaths. I have to wonder how they're affecting me. My hearing has been decimated by a recent bout of illness that I feel inside my sinuses and along the narrow tract to my left ear canal, the cause unknown. Likely springtime allergies. I take pills, but nothing helps.

As I drive, they descend towards me like a wintry blizzard. The imagery is easy as the skies have darkened over. The heat of the previous month has evaporated, leaving cool breezes. I drive West through the Valley, but it's like running the gauntlet. There's no escape. If this is what's making me ill, I'm swimming in a sea of it. The entire Valley has filled with the substance. I can't remember when it's ever been like this, or perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention. It's like an outbreak.

I'm being forced to commute 29km from Chilliwack to Abbotsford every working day at a time when gas prices are hovering around $1.40 a litre, and rising. I just heard on the news that the cost of a barrel of oil will rise to $200 U.S. by the end of Summer. I'm only making about $10.50 an hour, minus taxes and fees. It's not really worth the hassle. In any event, and even before all this bad stuff went down with my g/f, I was going to talk to my manager about work, seeing if the new job opening in the Fulfillment team was going to pay out more money. The logic behind my standpoint is going to be based on the fact that this is a warehouse position, and local warehouses are paying $13 an hour starting wage to guys with less experience than me. I'm due for my annual raise in less than a month anyway, so now is the time to talk money. Considering the fact that I have five years retail experience and I worked as a supervisor of a department entirely comparable to an existing department at the Home Depot for one year, why shouldn't I be making more? One guy I worked with started out at $11.50, just because he worked a construction job, whereas I started at $9.50, and that was considered a high rate. I can't be playing around making chicken scratch if I'm going to be moving out on my own again.

My girlfriend and I are officially broken up now and I'm expected to move out of the apartment immediately. I won't be able to move into my own place until at least the end of the month, so I'm forced to live with my parents until then.

Things have been going downhill in my life for a while now. I never should have moved in with my girlfriend in the first place and I certainly shouldn't have stayed as long as I did after seeing how things were. Life with her has been terrible. The emotional drama has been tearing me apart and I've fallen into a deep depression. Now, everything in my life is changing. I'll have to commute from Chilliwack to Abbotsford every day to work, and I don't know if it's worth it. I need a new job in any event. The money hasn't been good enough to live on and build a savings. I can save up a little while living with my parents, but after moving out on my own, coming back was the absolute last thing I wanted.

I don't know what to do now, but I know I'm forced to do: I have to pack up my shit and bring it home, then hunt for a new apartment. Once I get a new place, I'll have to pack and unpack everything again. I'll basically be moving twice in one month. Maybe I'll look for a new job in the process, but I'm very unmotivated right now.

Sony is on the verge of releasing some much needed accessories for the PSP and PSP Slim. These are peripherals that should have been available at launch, but have been dragging behind by five years. The first is the D connector cable for TV-out. Basically, it's just a cord to hook your PSP up to your TV. It took them five years to make this. Considering there's seven different cables for TV/Stereo-out  listed for the PS3 on their official hardware accessories site, it's a little odd that the PSP has zero. Why would you want a TV cable for the PSP? To play PSP UMDs, music and downloaded content on your TV and to play games without squinting at a tiny screen. Sure, the resolution will be crap, but who cares? It's a portable movie player you can carry in your pocket.

The other accessory is the 1Seg tuner, which is essentially a digital TV tuner for the PSP. So far, this is only available in Japan, and only with the PSP slim, but it allows you to watch digital TV on your PSP anywhere where there's a signal. It attaches to the top of the PSP and has a little antennae.

The third accessory is perhaps the most useful. It's a GPS attachment you can take with you on the go. When you get as lost as me, you need it, and with the eight hours battery life of the PSP and car charger, it'll last you on those long trips.

I've been trying to figure out for a while now how to upload my blog onto Facebook. Considering that I blog about everything, this feature is a must. There are so many applications and none of them are suitable for this purpose. While browsing livejournal applications on Facebook, I read a note about Notes, a built-in feature that has previously been buried under all my other applications. All I had to do was upload my own RSS feed and I was in. Now I can annoy the hell out of everyone with greater efficiency. Hooray!

I was inspired by PVP alt. comic "DING!" to play some WoW, but mainly it was due to the fact that I don't have GTA IV, Rock Band, or an X-Box 360 to invest my time in. I didn't want to play on my level 68 Blood-Elf Paladin, because it felt like it was too much of a chore, so I tried making a Gnome for kicks and giggles. The noobishness of the noob server I went on was truly epic. Noobs were trying to sell their level one armour they picked up by tells in the general. One dude was more preoccupied with trying to sell a piece of chest armour for a few coppers than actually playing the game, thereby earning more copper and silver than he could ever possibly make as a salesman of lowbie armour. This was stuff most people throw away when they pick it up. It's like he couldn't bear to sell it to a vendor for one copper less than it's total value. No, he needed the full return on his investment. This was the equivalent of selling a house in R/L to him. No stereotype was ignored. Even before my character had fully manifested in the server someone was saying some slurred racist shit. I believe the word he used was, "nigred." Something similar to that. Then two second later, someone challenged me to a duel, because when you're just born into a game, you're in the perfect position to wage a battle against another player. That's like the team-killing players who'll grenade their own members the second a battle starts in an online shooter.

I only played that character for an hour before logging. I tried going back a little while later, but the sever was full, and I was 279th in line. This is a new server, mind you. So many people had jumped on it that it was overloaded, so I said, "Fuck it," literally, and found an old alt of mine I had used when I was playing with my g/f for a week, a level five Night Elf Hunter. I always wanted to try my hand at hunter after fighting them in Battlegrounds. They're so cheap with their movement binding shots, ranged, and pets. Plus being a hunter is like playing Pokemon, you get to catch your own monsters and have them battle for you.

So I'm levelling up without much hassle, and someone I land in the middle of guild party being led by a level 40er, and we're just killing like mad, so times are good. I go back to town, though, and the Horde has dropped in. My first reaction is delight to see the Horde enacting their revenge on an unsuspecting village. Then I realize I'm an Alliance character, and they've just killed the NPC I need to turn my time-limited quest into. I didn't really understand the logic behind their raid. Sure, it's fun wiping out entire villages, but they were incapable of attacking any of the lowbie players, as they're not qued for PVP. That's where the real satisfaction lies: in making noobs quit the game out of frustration, and it was pretty frustrating for me, but I had other shit to do in the area, so I just went off and did that while I waited for the respawns on the quest givers.

If any someone had been telling Chuck Norris jokes in the General chat, the WoW experience would be complete.